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This blog serves my columns as an archive, a place to add footnotes,data sources and drafts of my weekly 550 word column for the Sky Hi News.(www.skyhidailynews.com) Often these drafts are posted on my Facebook page, The Muftic Forum.. To learn more about the posting subject, click onto the links at the end of the posting.Blog will be on vacation May 28-June 25 2018, with sporadic to no postings during that time.
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Sunday, October 30, 2016

Ancient Romans had a superstition that on a certain date, something bad would happen and they expressed it with “beware the Ides of March”. We should rephrase that as the “beware the Ides (or near Ides) of October”, since that is when political dirty tricks and surprises seem to come out of the blue. The FBI dropped a potential game changer eleven days before Nov 8 when they wrote a letter to Congressional leadership saying they found more emails that pertained to Hillary Clinton’s email server.Timing is everything . The surprises coming so late in the game give the targets no time to defend themselves, especially when reports are the FBI investigators sat on this information for weeks, waiting until October 27 to tell Director Comey, putting him in an untenable situation , danged if he did and did if he did not.

It is even more of a surprise when the surprise is unprecedented, with its director violating his own FBI department and Department of Justice rules not to spring findings related to a candidate within the 60 day pre election day period or that they violated their own FBI rules not to discuss if and what was being investigated until the investigation was completed. How did it happen that the FBI announced they were undertaking more investigations of Hillary Clinton’s emails without having even reviewed the material that appeared to be “pertinent” and were not sent by her?

Another surprise was sudden attention on the long predicted increase in Obamacare premiums. If you get your insurance from an exchange and you get a subsidy or you get your insurance from your employer, or military related provider, or are on Medicare and Medicaid, you will not see an increase due to Obamacare.premiums because they do not get insurance through the Obamacare system,. That is due to a general increase in health care costs which would have risen anyway and will be worse even if Obamacare goes away.Those who earn too much money to be qualified for subsidies.who do get insurance from the state Obamacare exchanges will see the hike. Congress can fix that if it wants to.

Who occupies the White House will have the power to influence our lives by interpreting legislation broadly, appointing agreeing cabinet officials, and nominating candidates to fill Supreme Court and lower court vacancies.Whether you still have to vote, know that whatever your motivation, love, hate, protest, your vote for a candidate or non vote or a third party vote is then all that really counts to determine who will occupy the White House and run the Senate. Recent Colorado polls: Clinton and Tump are tied in the state.

Here is what at stake : If Donald Trump and the GOP continue to be the majority in both houses of Congress and control the White House and Supreme Court appointee process, women’s control of their reproductive lives is in danger as Roe v Wade could be overturned. Obamacare will be repealed with no effective and comparable replacement for the 20 million losing insurance. The GOP still beats its drums for repeal of Obamacare, but after years of trying, they have found no replacement to cover similar numbers with similar consumer protections. Donald Trump proposes enormous tax cuts for the rich depending on old failed trickle down theories, and will increase the gap between the rich and the middle class. Fossil fuels will get preferential treatment .

What is even more critical are the issues of war and peace: Donald Trump’s stream of conscious uncontrolled demagogic mouth vs. skilled diplomatic experience of Hillary Clinton is the choice we must make in a dangerous world where one word or phrase could harm American national security, and provoke a needless war or a frightening incident that leads us to the brink.http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/12/news/economy/health-care-costs/index.htm

Friday, October 28, 2016

The fat lady has not yet sung. The FBI just lobbed an
IED into the campaign, a true October surprise. This is tasty fodder for the
GOP opposition anxious to jump to their conclusions.. The House email
investigation is now reopened eleven days before the election, with the FBI
reporting they found more emails that need to be investigated. Whether these
new emails provide proof Clinton intentionally sent classified material and lied
about, unlike the previous findings, is not known since the investigation has
just started. If it is like the FBI’s previous meticulous investigation, we
will not know until well after the election. Until then, expect GOP political
operatives to act as jury, judge, and hangman. Donald Trump’s rally audiences will raise
their chant of ‘lock her up’ with even greater lynch mob fervor now. In the
meantime, FBI director Comey indicated in his announcement “the FBI does
not yet know if the new material in question is "significant." The results could be or could not be the same
as with the earlier investigated emails.

Whether
this will influence voters who have not voted already or have made up their
minds because of other issues, is yet to be seen. Both candidates have legal clouds hanging
over them, now, though Clinton’s cloud is more threatening because the accusations
could concern a crime. Donald Trump’s suit against him that he committed civil
fraud regarding Trump University goes to trial after the election.

What is also yet unknown is voter turnout.
Both major party campaigns believe that
unless their supporters actually vote instead of just answering polls, they
could lose. According to Bloomberg News, insiders in the Trump campaign are
trying to “suppress” the Clinton vote by last minute reminders of her negatives
so that voters just leave that line on the ballot blank. This FBI action can
help the voter suppression effort. The Clinton camp is also concerned that the
media reports that she has the race already won, some will not make the effort
to get their ballots in. Many a race has been lost or won by a vote or two in each precinct.
Colorado is still considered a swing state.
The only poll that counts on election-day is the actual vote.

Pollsters tell us the most important
factor that determines voter choice is “does he/she care about me “.Polls show
more women have seen enough of Trump’s behavior to answer that with a “no”.For many women Trump is a reminder of their worst nightmare, of past
unpleasant experiences with men of his personality traits...an intimidating
bully and/or a groper who judges women as objects to be scored one to ten.

Only 4% of African Americans polled also
supported Donald Trump. Many expressed they were insulted by Trump’s negative
broad brush painting of their lives. A majority of Hispanics believe Trump is
even hostile to themselves and their concerns. In Colorado Hispanics make up 14.5% of
eligible voters, enough to swing the outcome if they turn out to vote.

The FBI's reopened investigation will probably
eclipse stories concerning Wikileaks and Obamacare .. Wikileaks’ release of
hacked emails so far only reinforced existing negative opinions
about Clinton. The Obamacare premium hikes
had become a hot topic deceptively spun.Trump supporters made it sound like everyone’s premiums were going up 20%.
Wrong. Only a small percentage of
consumers will be affected. Get your
insurance from your employer, a subsidy (tax credit; premium assistance) from
Connect for Health Colorado exchange with over 85,000 customers, Medicare, or
Medicaid, or military related providers? Obamacare premium increases will not cause
your rates to increase. Those impacted with be those who make too much money to
qualify for subsidies and who buy insurance through Connect for Health Colorado
or other state exchanges. Congress than
fix that problem if they want.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Beware of near election time ‘surprises’ Obamacare news that premiums will increase for 2017 is one of those “surprises”, but it is hardly new news since it was predicted months ago.. It has become one issue that sounds worse than it is. Donald Trump and the GOP have tried to set your hair on fire. Get your insurance from your employer, a subsidy (tax credit; premium assistance) from Connect for Health Colorado exchange (over 85,000), Medicare, and Medicaid? The Obamacare premium increases will not affect you.

Trump's non solution to health care is to .repeal and increase competition across state boundaries is a fraud. That solution has already been dissed by the Congressional Budget Office and recently others of having little impact on affordability..The higher standards set by Obamacare for coverage and the forbidding of the unfair, anti patient practices would go away..It’s back to the bad old days..

Repeal it is the uniform GOP campaign platform. So far after eight years of trying, the GOP has not been able to come up with a viable replacement. that would cover the same numbers more cheaply, either, or would keep the improvements in coverage .

You will hear you have no choice of insurers because they have deserted Obamacare. In Colorado, exchanges still have three private provider companies participating, but it will depend upon the plan you choose. if Obamacare is repealed and include Medicaid expansion, up to 20 million in the US will have no choice of insurers because they can no longer afford any insurance, just as they were before Obamacare.

if you get your insurance from an exchange and you get a subsidy because the subsidy will increase to offset the premium increase. If you get your insurance from your employer, or military related insurance, that will not be impacted by Obamacare premium increases. If you are on Medicare and Medicaid, you will not see an increase in out of pocket obligations due to Obamacare premium increases, But those who earn too much money to be qualified for subsidies.who do get insurance from the state exchange will see the hike. These are self-employed or work for a small business not required to provide health insurance for their employees (with a workforce with under 50 employees). That gap needs to be fixed by Congress.

Watch out, too, for sound good solutions like “let the free market do it.” That is why we got Obamacare in the first place because the free market nationwide failed, provided bad coverage, failed to cover pre-existing conditions, kicked people off insurance if they exceeded caps, discriminated against women, and then charged them premiums that they could not afford. It left nearly 30 million without insurance. Obamacare fixed those bad practices for all insurance, whether employer or privately or exchange provided and actually lowered the cost curve. All insurance was predicted to get more expensive regardless of Obamacare or not, but at least the increases are less than they would have been and premiums are still 12% lower than originally predicted when the law was drafted.

In Colorado on the ballot Nov. 8 , is amendment 69, is another choice: a single payer system. There is no free lunch and the taxation to pay for it is very steep though proponents claim consumers will still come out ahead because of savings to them and it is long term financially viable. Those claims are highly controversial. Inform yourself before voting.by going to the state issued ‘blue book” at https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cga-legislativecouncil/ballotblue-book

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Saturday Donald Trump delivered a much ballyhooed First One
Hundred Days speech in Gettysburg, billed as what he would do in that time
period if elected. Instead, it was a case in point of why Donald Trump is
failing as an agent of change.

His speech was to be a pivot to issues away from the
sensational last few weeks where the focus has been on his alleged predatory
sexual behavior. However, he buried his
own intended message by dwelling on the sensational news with his promise to
sue all ten women who came forward to testify to his unwelcome advances. Bully good?
A few hours later, an unintimidated #11 went public. He began his speech
by relaunching his claim that into the “system is rigged,” followed by a riff on
familiar refrains, “the FBI is rigged, the press is rigged”, and everything and everyone opposed to his views
are rigged. He continued with charges and grievances, citing some statistics
that had been debunked by independent fact checkers earlier.

His issue discussion was finally reached and it drew together
familiar themes, but much more fleshed out and specific. This deserves coverage and debate, but
waiting until less than three weeks to election day and burying it as nearly a sub point in
sensationalistic news making, an opportunity was missed. A skilled candidate would understand how to
direct media attention by not highlighting diversions, but that takes
self-discipline, which Trump lacks.

Issues are important, especially in the context that this is
a change election and that a large segment of public opinion believes the
country is headed in the wrong direction.

Nonetheless, looking at a recent history of polls, Trump has
not benefitted by the change sentiment, at least not enough to stay ahead of
Hillary Clinton in the polls consistently over the campaign from start to near
finish. To turn a Trump ad phrase on its ears, if this is such a change
election, why isn’t Trump far ahead of Clinton in the polls instead of
constantly running behind her?

There are some good reasons. While his issue message
resonates with many, the problem is the messenger himself .Trump takes personal
offense at barbs and gets hung up on a compulsive need to respond. He
undermines democratic traditions by threatening not to honor the vote, or
ignoring facts, legal due process, and standards of proof. Major turnoffs are
his hostile comments directed toward women, immigrants, and minorities such as
“build the wall”, “nasty woman”, “ban” those from certain countries,
practitioners of a religion, ,and promising wholesale deportation regardless of
individual constitutional rights, individual circumstances, or family concerns.
The implied response from those groups offended by him is, “yes we want
improvement, but no, no, not that kind by that person.”

Hillary Clinton represents the status quo, but with an
improved version, advocating stronger Wall Street regulation, a no fly zone in
Syria, improving Obamacare, and more. She is indeed a political operator, but
she still looks better to many more than the Trump brand of replacement. Even fact finders conclude she is far more factual than Trump.The Council of Economic Advisers reported real median household income grew 5.2 percent from 2014 to 2015, the fastest annual growth on record...The number of people in poverty fell by 3.5 million... the largest one-year drop since 1968. Likewise, Pres. Obama’s popularity at 57%, extremely high
for a last term president, is another indication that there are more content with the status quo than the
Trump camp counted on.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

One of the strangest phenomena of the campaign for the presidency is the response those who normally would be supporting the Democratic candidate for president but will not vote for Trump and will also not vote for Hillary Clinton. Press those who also say they will not vote for Donald Trump to tell why they also will not vote for Clinton, and and what they often say "Hillary is a liar." Then if you ask them to give examples and up comes "the emails". Press them more, and ask them what she lied about and they become very vague: "well, she sent classified correspondence and she said she didn't. ". " They are repeating a slogan Clinton's opponents delivered and yet has not stood up to fact checking, from the FBI or by independent fact checkers.

Trump's demagogic oratory raises the issue to a dangerous level. If you listen to the rallies Trump holds, the chant becomes: "Jail her, jail her". whenever he accuses Hillary Clinton of lying on whether she knew she sent classified material or destroyed her emails. Forget the Constitution, the law, the provisions of due process, and any similarity to a Banana republic practcies. In Debate #2 Trump said if he were in charge of the law, she would be in jail.

Fortunately he could not be in charge of the law, thanks to the Constitution, but his rally audience is ready to be judge, jury and executioner: ". Jail her, Jail her" They chant with such fervor that all that is missing from their lynch mob fervor is to grab the torches, and a rope and hang her from the nearest limb.

Even more frightening are supporters of Trump and Trump himself who claims the election is rigged, undermining faith in the process and setting himself up to fail with a prefabricated excuse: the election "will be"" rigged (the election has not taken place; no proof of fraud yet available) and the press is rigging it by covering his controversial statements. Some of his followers feel urged to start a revolution if Trump loses the election. They are getting prepared not to accept the vote outcome. In fact, a speaker at Grand Lake's" Constitution Week" recently is loudly proclaiming. Scheduled as the keynote speaker was Milwaukee County Sheriff, David A. Clarke Jr., , ""Grab the torches and the pitchforks; the election is rigged" are comments for which Clarke is most famous. I thought the purpose of Constitution Week was to support the Constitution, not advocating to violate it.

Both independent fact checkers and the testimony of the FBI director set the record straight regarding why they believe Hillary Clinton could not be prosecuted for criminal action.

The FBI found she did not lie to them, and that she had not intentionally sent emails marked classified (they were not correctly marked and buried in them when quotations were made, they were obscurely marked). In order to even prosecute someone for a criminal act, there must proof of intent to break the law beyond a reasonable doubt, and the FBI found no evidence of either.

Typical of Donald Trump, he responded by attacking the Republican FBI director as rigging the findings. If he does not like the message, he tries to destroy the messenger, facts notwithstanding nor refuted by presenting other facts.

Trump has doubled down accusing Hillary Clinton of acid washing and destroying emails after she got a subpoena but per factcheck.org not factually correct. Nothing was acid washed. Per factcheck.org, the sequence and that Clinton ordered the destruction make such prosecution a failure: Trump told Clinton “after getting the subpoena” to turn over documents related to the Benghazi investigation “you delete 33,000 emails.” A contractor managing Clinton’s server deleted the emails. There is no evidence Clinton knew when they were deleted._________________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes:

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/factchecking-the-second-presidential-debate/ on FBI findings."emails were deleted after Clinton received a subpoena from a Republican-controlled House committee investigation into the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. But there is no evidence that Clinton knew that the emails were deleted after the subpoena was issued." and there was no acid wash

Monday, October 10, 2016

The second presidential debate Sunday October 9 was an epic
one, alright, epically nasty. The nation and the world to which this was
broadcast was on edge of their seats to see if Donald Trump would contritely apologize for the leaked audio and
video of his boasting of his conquests of groping and sexually predatory
behavior toward women. He did not. Instead he paraded before the world and
placed in the debate audience some of the women with whom Bill Clinton had had
affairs. Monica Lewinsky was not among the attendees. He justified his own behavior because Bill
Clinton had spoken or done worse.

That Trump stopped
the run for the exit door of evangelical and “establishment” Republicans
withdrawing their endorsement is yet to be seen. What he did, however, was claim that he “has
not groped” and he called the damning audios just “locker room” talk and awkwardly
tried to switch the topic to fighting Isis. He can only hope no “groped” women
come forward.

It is a good thing that Bill Clinton is not running for
president this go around. His actions over twenty years ago were worthy of the
consequences. The candidate, however, is
Hillary Clinton and, if anything, she showed remarkable composure, and exuded
dignity in the face of Trump’s attempt to rattle her or to paint her with the
sins of her husband. In the run up to the debate he had tried to make the point
that Hillary was the “enabler” because she showed no respect for women because
she dared to try to destroy the reputation of “the other women”. That must be some male fantasy to expect the
victim, the wronged wife, to take a kind and caring approach to the “other
women” because of some feminist ideology. Given the public focus on all of the
tawdriness, I imagine not many women would have had the self-control to invoke
Michelle Obama’s advice, “when they go low, we go high” as Hillary Clinton did
Sunday night. It is her steeliness and self control under such provocations that
stand in contrast to tweet happy Trump who reacts whenever his manhood or ego
is stroked or offended that makes him particularly unsuited to make rational
policy decisions regarding war and peace.

Donald Trump made some eyebrow raising comments, especially
regarding his differences with his own running mate Mike Pence over policies
toward Russia and Syria. Like a wannabe
tin pot dictator, he said he would appoint a prosecutor to put Hillary in jail
for her alleged lies on the email server because he disagreed with the FBI director’s
findings that she had no intent to relay material marked classified or had lied
to him. In the post-debate spin room, the
shock of Trump advocating to abuse legal and due process to get rid of an
opponent overshadowed his stock allegations of Clinton lies. Trump also openly admitted he had used a tax
loophole to avoid paying federal personal income taxes for years. She responded
by advocating an expanded version of the original Buffett Rule that would impose a 30% income
tax on income over $1 million with her proposed additional surtaxes on the five
million dollar earners. She then scored unrebutted points that Trump’s tax
proposals would give enormous tax cuts to the wealthy and raise taxes on some
in the middle class.

Wednesday, October 5, 2016

The question is why has Mike Pence been seemingly out of the White House loop on the Russian connection controvers? Perhaps it goes back to the 2016 campaign when Pence parted ways with Trump on Russian policy. Going back to two prior postings on this blog, this has a history, including the Mike Flynn/Pence flap re: Pence saying Flynn lied to him. In these blogs are also references to the Russian connections in the 2016 campaign and possible financial entanglments with Russia in the Trump administration. Whether Pence took himself out of being involved in the Russian connection issue or if Trump did, is unknown. However, it may be Pence himself removing himself and the matter flared up when he accused Flynn of lying about the nature of his conversations with the Russian ambassador, that forced Trump to fire Flynn.

Blog Posting Oct. 5 2016"One event in the Vice Presidential debate, October 4, was the position of GOP candidate Mike Pence regarding Russia. The comments on Russia got lost in Pence's absolute denial that Donal Trump ever said Russian President Vladimir Putin was a better leader than Pres. Obana. The quibble could be whether the correct term was "stronger". In any case, there is plenty of video available on Trump's comments which makes Pence look like a liar, albeit a smoothe one delivered with conviction. What should also be the story is that Pence took a hard line on Russia saying we should stand up to them.. This deserves some closer scrutiny and looks like there is a division on foreign policy between the two running mates. Take a look at the debate as can be accessed via You Tube regarding Pence's views of Russia incursions into the Crimea, Ukraine and Georgia...a great contrast from Trump's prior statements.What does count in 2016 ,however, is Trump's position, though Pence might use his own quotes in his own future campaigns.It stands in sharp contrast with the GOP presidential candidate himself, Donald Trump, who has been advocating a foreign policy that strangely runs parallel to the same as Russia's, from declaring NATO obsolete, not objecting to the Russian threats and incursions into Eastern Ukraine, and recognizing Russia's grab of the Crimea. In fact, the mutual comments between Trump and Putin have been so complimentary that it has been timed a "bromance" of mutual admiration.Not only is this a major issue in foreign policy, but in calls into question whether Trump can even negotiate with Putin in America's and our alliies' security interests without giving away the store to Russia. Negotiation means give and take and the question remains what Trump would give away to make a deal.http://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/trumps-foreign-policy-make-russia-great.htmlhttp://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/vice-presidential-debate-putin-mike-pence-donald-trump-229147http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/28/politics/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-quotes/ "___________________________________________________________________________Blog posting Feb, 14, 2017"General Michael Flynn's departure from the White House may have much deeper roots than just his lie to both Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence about conversations with the Russian ambassador. The conflict between the two goes back to the days of the campaign post GOP conventions. I noted that in a column at that time. In the Vice Presidential debate, Pence parted ways on Russia from candidate Donald Trump's line.From my blog posting 10/5/16: (repeated above)and continues:

"Some background: For some time, the question has been why has Donald Trump been so cozy with Russia? There has been a great deal of speculation ranging from Trump's debts to Russia oligarchs to blackmail , the connection with the Russian Alfa Bank, with embarrassing pictures (a victim of a honey trap). Fingers have been pointed to influencing Trump's views of Russia was his campaign manager, who departed the campaign mid year, Paul Manafort, who was an advisor to the ousted president of the Ukraine who sought refuge in Moscow after a coup. Congressional investigations into Russian influence and hacking in the US elections are just getting underway. Ukraine is involved. The Russians have conducted a stealth takeover of the eastern parts of that country and the West punished Russia with economic sanctions. The Flynn issue involves lies about his pre- January conversations with the Russian ambassador over lifting those sanctions. The question arises was this a thank you for the role Russia played in helping Trump win by planting false news stories and by hacking and revealing damaging information regarding Hillary Clinton.That there are many concerned about why Donald Trump only ever has kind words for Russia and their president Vladimir Putin, while being critical of even our closest allies and even calling NATO, our mutual defense treaty with Europe, obsolete. It has set our Eastern Europe members of NATO on edge and one of President Obama's departing actions was to announce the placement of US troops in Poland as a signal to Russia not to mess with our Baltic members. Trump and others, including libertarians, had already expressed concern about going to war to support the small trio of Baltic nations in spite of their NATO membership. Russians have always seen the Baltics, with their ports to the sea, as part of theirs since there is a large number of Russians living in those areas left over from the old Soviet military occupations days when the Baltics were their satellites. Russia has a modus operandi of using "saving discrimination against Russian minorities" as an excuse to grab territory and the Baltics are ripe targets. Their membership in NATO has made Russia think twice. Ukraine, Crimea, and Georgia, recent targets of Russian grabs, are not part of NATO and are not under NATO's protections. Flynn was Donald Trump's closest campaign advisor on foreign affairs through out the campaign."

Monday, October 3, 2016

The New York Times was slipped a 1995 personal tax filing of Donald Trump's and the paper printed it. Since Trump has refused to make his tax returns public, or the next 18 years' worth either, the leaked returns leave us with a lot of questions , speculation and a gliimpse into his character and priorities He is his own priority since his tax proposals benefit him and he is proud he pays no personal income taxes.

The 1995 filings show nearly a billion dollara loss and a loophole only those big investors in real estate can use, one that could possibly save him from paying personal income taxes from then until at least now. He has not disputed that he has paid no income taxes, but instead he said in the first presidential debate, it was just proof of how smart he was His surrogates, including Rudy Guiliani, went a bit farther, calling him a" genius"..

The question is: how does this help the middle clase and rust belt workers? He says "trust him; he will fix it" because he knows the tax code so well. While what Trump did may not have been illegal, he should not be let off the hook so easily. Hillary Clinton's best line Oct. 3: "That's putting the fox in charge of the hen house door".

1.The most damning part of the returns was revealing that that he lost a billion in that one year which was the same year there was a boom in real estate. What sort of a business man is that? If he is so smart, why not prove it by releasing his other tax returns . He should now be eager to prove that he is so smart. Or maybe it might show that he used the loophole in subsequent years. So long as he fails to release his tax filings, we will never know.

If he claims that he has the fiduciary responsibility to investors and his family by using tax loopholes to reduce costs and maximize profits, then a loss of a billion hardly shows responsibility to investors or his own family. What it does show he truly made whopping bad judgment calls in that particular year.

2. He should be pinned down on whether he would roll back the same tax loophole that could benefit him for the next 18 years. He has a huge conflict of interest in this one. Will the real estate loss carried forward still be permitted in his "reforms"? That is the specific loophole which allows him to avoid paying personal taxes for the years following the loss he claimed? So far that loophole is not included in this tax reform plans. The tax system may be rigged but he has not plans to change that particular rigging. 3. By not putting his Trump, Inc. investments into a blind trust that fits any standard definition, as he is proposing to do , he will still be benefitted in his post presidency, assuming by how well his children run his business. . . Talk about a conflict of interest, this is truly epic..

4. . His adoption of the GOP trickle down tax plans is the same ones that contributed to thec middle class being left behind in the past. . The theory is give the upper 1 or 2% tax breaks, and they will invest more and stiumulate the economy The trickle rarely has happened. . Even former GOP Congressman and host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough, has called “thirty years of trickle down economics, B___ S___”.

5. His "modified" flat tax proposal would still make the 1% even richer. His proposed reduction to a 15% cap on capital gains taxes is no guarantee that the middle class would benefit because there is no mechanism to force any trickle down. It depends upon whether reducing capital games does stiumulate the economy, a debatable theory which has not played out in modern history. Middle class folks without millions to invest would see no direct benefits, but those who have looked at it agree Donald Trump and his family and others like him would gain much.

6. It would be easy to paint Trump's trade policiy proposal to raise duties and tariffs as good for those in the rust belt whose jobs went overseas. However it could be harmful to others, especially in Colorado. Most states are not in the rust belt and Colorado is booming because of our high tech sector. Our state and its workforce has adjusted to the new tech economy. There are 11 million others engaged in international trade who would be put in jeopardy with retaliatory trade policies.. Retaliatory trade actions from those kept from exporting to the US may not be just confined to like industries: they could also impact Colorado's beef and grain exports, too. . A recent New Yorker article actually quotes the head of Moody Analytics who makes some statistical projections about job growth under a Trump presidency which show more job losses than gains..

About Me

Felicia Muftic is a political columnist with the Sky Hi Daily News, Grand County, Colorado. She writes on current events from a pragmatic, fact based, reasoned perspective.
Felicia has nearly 50 years of involvement in politics, finance,and consumer affairs as either a fly on the wall in international, national, state and local levels or a participant.
Parallel to all of this is intense involvement for over 50 years in the the political process, serving in both cabinet and staff in the administration of Mayor Federico Pena . Partially educated in Europe and married to physician-refugee from the Balkans, her interests are not confined to US domestic problems, but she also has a world view and experiences which are often reflected in her columns.
Felicia Muftic es un columnista político del diario Sky News Hola, Grand County, Colorado. Felicia tiene casi 50 años de participación en la política, las finanzas y de asuntos del consumidor, ya sea como una mosca en la pared en la internacional, nacional, estatal y local o de un participante. Para más información, visite www.mufticforum.com